


Barely Human

by LunaCatriona



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of the data loss episode, Anxiety, Mental Health Issues, References to Depression, Series 3 Episode 2, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, mention of an eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-01-26 12:09:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12557064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaCatriona/pseuds/LunaCatriona
Summary: "You told me something that scared me to death: 'Don't take me home; I can't face that yet; I'm ashamed that I'm barely human; I'm ashamed that I don't have a heart you can break; I'm just action; and at other times, reaction.'" - "Nothing to Remember" by Neko Case.Every day, Nicola Murray hears Malcolm Tucker tell her she's not a normal human being. Unfortunately, Nicola already knows he's right, and that she is barely human at all - it's her fatal flaw. And when the time comes to do something about it, there's only one thing left to do.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've wanted to explore this idea for a while. What would have happened if the events of the data loss episode managed to overwhelm Nicola? It doesn't seem an impossible notion to me, so I set about writing it. It just kept niggling at me. I don't know if I'll do another chapter or if I'll just leave it as it is, and let everyone decide for themselves what happens in the end.

The rest of them had gone home.

She had not. She had taken a walk, until she looked at her watch and realised it was nearly ten o’clock, unable to face James and his apathy.

How she had ever loved him, she could not know. He didn’t feel anything deeper than paper cuts to the skin. She felt paper cuts right down to the bone. He did not know how to give comfort or love, so toxic was his own need to be the big man. And so he tore his wife’s confidence to shreds until she felt two inches tall, rather than show compassion or love; in her naivety in her twenties, she had believed that was what a real man was. It’s what the world told her a man was. She had no idea back then that it could contribute so heavily to her own self-destruction.

Her anxiety in the past few months, even before taking the DoSAC job, had reached new heights. With the rising tensions at home when James started a new job at Albany, and his increasing refusal to behave like a decent father, she had started to lose her grip on her self-control. But now it was completely out the window. A new job, new colleagues, new ways to fuck up. Not to mention the lean, mean bollocking machine that seemed to stalk her like a second shadow, waiting for the moment to pounce.

What had accompanied her anxiety recently, though, was crippling. The notion that she was doomed to despair, that there was no way out of her dead ends, that she could never be happy again…that was something she was not used to at all. No matter what happened, she had always been able to see that there would be a time, however far into the future it may be, when she could be okay again.

She did not have that anymore. All she saw was the darkness.

After today, Nicola Murray wanted her existence to cease. Her own inadequacy, combined with Malcolm Tucker’s incessant need to remind her of it, was too much. The knowledge that she was a shit wife and an even worse mother, that wherever she was not where she ought to be, was too much. Everything was just too fucking much.

She stood there, the wind in her hair, and thought of when she started to hate herself. It was a moment she could not pinpoint; she had no memory of actually knowing who she was, never mind liking it.

And today…well, today, she had failed as a politician, as a mother, and as a wife. In fairness, she thought, James failed as a husband on a regular basis so perhaps her failure on that front could be excused. But everything else was down to her unnatural ability to fuck up. Malcolm was right. She was an omnishambles. She wasn’t fit for purpose.

She looked down to the Thames below. How many people had drowned in that river? How many people had jumped from Westminster Bridge?

Nicola couldn’t swim for shit. She wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of surviving.

Her children weren’t even a deterrent. They were better off without her for a mother. Even if James didn’t step up, his sister and Nicola’s mother would. They would not be without a guardian. They would be cared for and they would be loved, far better than they were now. They were the only precious thing she had given this world, but she poisoned them with her every failure.

This was the day everything had changed. Her own view had shifted. She saw every mistake she made and she crucified herself for it. From before she had even got out of bed, everything she had done had been wrong.

Through the night, James had shouted at their son, who was only five years old, for waking him up after having a bad dream. Nicola didn’t intervene. She had allowed James to shout and swear at a child – their child – and told herself it was only because he was tired and cranky. She had excused it. She had failed to protect and comfort her little boy. The bottom line was she just didn’t have the energy to cause yet another dispute in her already ridiculous excuse for a marriage.

She had got into the car to head to work, only to find that the papers had yet again found an unnecessary cruelty and sadism towards her. James had called and shouted at her for waking everyone up too early as she rushed out the door. She’d left James to deal with three children and a grouchy teenager at seven in the morning and, despite her jokey response, she felt guilty for waking her children before they needed to. They were, after all, children, and did need their sleep far more than she needed hers.

Malcolm had joined her, only to tell her that not only did she come across as glum, but she looked smug as well. It was one negativity she had never thought to apply to herself, because she always felt so inadequate; what did she have to be smug about? She was hopeless. She had this job practically by default, something Malcolm made no secret of, so what did she have to be smug about? There was no real achievement here, and her only inheritance was a department that died a little more every single day, and killed her inside at the same time.

Then the data loss. Christ, that fucking data loss. It wasn’t even her fault, but it was her responsibility to see it was cleared up. And in her usual clueless fashion, she had fumbled about trying to sort it out, never really knowing how to do it.

The Guardian…she had no words. She could not begin to explain how pathetically stupid she felt for not paying attention to her surroundings. Malcolm’s reaction – to explode in a confined space – had terrified her, but the more she thought on it, the more justified she reckoned he was. She was an idiot. It was something she would have lost her cool over, too. It just so happened that Malcolm Tucker losing his rag was one of the scariest experiences on the planet, second only to the idea of being trapped in a lift.

And to remedy the resulting media disaster, someone, an innocent man, had to lose their job. She had tried to make sure it was Robyn, but because she had been too cowardly to do it herself, Glenn had elected to sack Andrew instead. All because Nicola was stupid, useless and gutless.

And despite that sacking, she was branded a “sourpuss” by the press anyway. It was all for nothing. It all achieved nothing, except yet another blow to her self-esteem. Another aspect of her being that she had to be paranoid about.

She knew now what a waste of a person she was. Malcolm’s assertions that she was not a normal human being were entirely warranted. In fact, she was barely human at all. The best thing for her was the freezing cold waters of the Thames, and the death that awaited her.

Her phone beeped, and she tore her gaze from the water below. It was a text message, from a number she had never seen before in her life.

_Get away from that bridge. Now._

She looked around her, startled by the thought someone was watching her. She wasn’t doing anything particularly eye-catching; plenty of people stood on that bridge to enjoy the view of London. She made the split-second decision to send a message in return.

_Who is this?_

Nicola gave the vicinity another sweeping search, but there was still nobody she recognised. Nobody close enough that she could see their face in the half-light, anyway.

_Never mind who I am. Get off the bridge._

Nicola took off her shoes sat on the edge of the bridge, and swung her legs over, dangling her feet over the Thames. She didn’t care what the stranger had to say; after all, what did they know of what it was to be Nicola Murray? What right did they have to tell her she could not seek out some relief? They didn’t even do it face to face. They hid on the other end of a phone signal, despite being able to see her. This person did not have the knowledge or the entitlement to tell her she could not do this.

The phone beeped again.

_NICOLA. Don’t you dare._

Nicola frowned.

_How do you know my name?_

Keeping her balance as she sat on this bridge was surprisingly difficult. It was easy to underestimate the toll the wind took on her ability to steady herself, especially while she tried to use her mobile phone. She stared at the screen; despite herself, she was actually a little curious to know who had managed to get hold of her phone number. For only a moment, it superseded her desire to die.

She shifted her weight on the hard wall on which she sat. Her stomach dropped for a moment at the thought of the journey down into the water. How far was it?

How deep was the Thames, anyway?

The phone sounded again, telling her she had another anonymous message from someone who had no right to be asking anything of her.

_Will you just come away from the edge!_

Nicola couldn’t work out where this person was. The street was dark and, for the most part, empty. There was nobody she knew, and yet someone could see her clearly enough to send another, more urgent text message.

_Don’t make me call 999._

“Excuse me?” a voice behind her called. It was a man, and by his accent, he was American. “Ma’am?”

Nicola didn’t answer him. She was too focused on her phone and the river to formulate an answer.

“Ma’am, I don’t know what you’re going through,” the man said to her, “but I do know that if you die, you’ll never get through it. And all your family, your friends, your colleagues, they’ll all be devastated.”

Nicola laughed. She didn’t find the idea at all amusing, just completely unbelievable. “Trust me, nobody will be devastated by this. If anything, they’ll be glad not to have to deal with me.”

Her phone made another noise – the number that had been texting her was now calling her. “I think whoever is calling you right now might be devastated,” the American pointed out. Nicola rejected the call. She did not want to talk to some stranger who’d got her phone number without her giving it.

“It’s nobody,” she said. “I don’t even know the number. Probably a cold caller.”

It beeped again.

_Please. I’m saying please. Don’t do this._

She heard the man who had stopped take a step closer, and she knew he was reading the message over her shoulder. “Whoever that is,” he told her, “I don’t think this is what they want for you.” He got up onto the parapet beside her, though he kept a safe distance and did not face the river as she did. “What’s your name?”

“Nicola,” she said.

“Daniel.” He looked around at her. He was younger than she was – only about thirty or so – and wore large glasses. His hair was hidden under a hat but, judging by his eyebrows and eyes, it must have been dark. “Can I take you home, Nicola?”

“I’m not going home,” Nicola said.

“What’s at home?”

“My husband and kids,” she replied. “I can’t deal with the arguing right now.”

“Okay,” he said. “Not home, then. What about work? Can you get to your office at this time?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s only my second week there. I guess I must be able to.”

Daniel smiled gently. “How about I walk you there?”

But she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to jump. Why was she sitting here listening to this idiot? She pushed her weight forwards, shifting an inch off the ledge. Daniel put a hand on her arm.

Her phoned made yet another noise.

_Nicola. Come on. Come to the pub opposite the HMRC._

The pub opposite the HMRC? Who on Earth would ask to meet her there, of all places? “The HMRC?” she whispered to herself, still trying to work out who the hell was on the other end of the line. It was someone who knew her well enough to know she would know where they were talking about. Someone who wanted to meet in a public place. Surely anyone she knew would have told her to come back to DoSAC, not a pub.

“I don’t know where that is,” Daniel said, “but I can walk with you.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she grumbled in response to his doggedness. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Nothing more important than making sure you don’t end up in the Thames,” he retorted. “The person texting you obviously knows you. Let me take you to them.”

Nicola closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she hit ‘reply.’

_OK._

With Daniel’s help, she turned back to face the road. He picked up her shoes, and she forced them onto her feet. “Okay,” he smiled at her. “To the HMRC?”

Her phone received another text message.

_I’ll be there in a few minutes._

“Um, it’s a pub, just at the bottom of that road. It’s actually opposite the HMRC,” she explained.

“Alrighty then,” he said.

They walked together, slowly, deliberately, while Nicola tried to decide exactly why she had engaged with Daniel and the mystery messenger, rather than just jump and get it fucking over with. That was what she ought to have done from the very beginning. Today had proved to her that she did not belong here. She did not belong with the rest of humanity, because she was not a properly functioning human being.

And yet, in that knowledge, she had replied to the messages. She had talked to Daniel. She had engaged. Against every fibre of her need to stop, she had continued.

Outside the pub, they stopped at the door. “Will you be okay?” asked Daniel.

“Yes,” Nicola said, though only because it was what was expected of her. “Yes, I’ll be fine.” Hesitantly, she reached out and touched his arm. “Thank you, Daniel.” She didn’t really mean it – she would much rather have been at the bottom of the Thames right now – but he had done what he felt was right, and his actions had saved her life, or at least her existence. She rather thought her life was beyond saviour. Gratitude was the normal reaction, and that was the reaction she had to give.

“You’re welcome, Nicola.”

She forced a smile and stepped into the pub. As soon as she was out of his field of vision, she let the smile fade. There was no need for it, and she did not have the strength to keep it up. Trying to find a familiar face, she turned in a circle, scanning the room for someone she knew, until a voice behind her said, “Westminster Bridge, Nicola? Drowning’s not a fun way to go, you know.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have decided to add a second chapter. This is an uncertain thing I'm trying - sort of experimental, in a way.

Nicola could hear the click of her heels until she stopped moving at the sound of those words. Rather than focus on that voice, she listened to the music played from the speakers through the pub. It was the end of a rather sinister song she vaguely recognised, not that she’d ever paid much attention to music.

_You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his red right hand._

The smell of alcohol went to her head, and she would have loved nothing more than to be drunk enough to forget her own name. To forget who she was, and who she failed to be. And, more than anything else, to forget who had summoned her to this godforsaken fucking pub in the first place. If she wasn’t so exhausted, she would have been fucking furious. Anyone else, she might have heard out, but this was beyond a joke. In fact, it probably _was_ some sick, warped joke, to call her away from the brink only to send her straight back there. It probably served as some sort of hobby.

“What a stupid thing to do.”

Nicola did not turn. She refused to. She was not doing this. She was not letting this happen. This was the worst thing that could have happened.

Without even looking behind her, she walked out of the pub into the night.

“Nicola!”

This was twisted. How could someone who had helped push her to breaking point then try to act the bloody hero? What kind of mind thought it was alright to destroy her and then try to save her? She didn’t need fucking saved; she needed left to do what was necessary.

Nicola stalked around the corner, back down the road that had brought her here. This was the last straw. This was the end of it. If, after everything, this was the way the people around her thought was the right way to behave, she was done. There was no point in trying to get through to anyone. They didn’t understand why she needed this.

She ran across the road, back to where she had been standing on Westminster Bridge. She tore off her shoes and climbed up onto the edge, standing on the parapet. She should never have indulged her curiosity by setting foot in that pub. No, she should have thrown herself off this bridge without a backwards glance.

“NICOLA!”

She stepped out, but faltered and put her foot back onto the cold stone. The water flowing below didn’t look even remotely threatening. It wasn’t rough or choppy. It didn’t swirl around rocks or tree roots. It was almost still. It was inviting.

How easy would it be to just drop? To disappear, never to be seen or heard from again? Once that decision was made, that was it. There was no backtracking, no way to undo it. She could hear the murmur of shocked onlookers, debating what to do. How she wanted to tell them to just let it go. What right did they have to try and keep her here? As much right as the people who helped fuel the realisation that she was not worth enough to survive life, never mind live it.

“No! Nobody call the police! I know her. I can get her down.”

Nicola almost took that as a challenge, if not for the fact she didn’t want any more challenges. She wanted peace from the voices around her, and that niggling poison in her mind that seeped through her every cell, and told her she was not meant for this world.

The wind was getting up, she noticed. There had been a storm forecast for tonight but, like most Brits, she took the weather forecast with a pinch of salt. For once, though, it seemed the Met Office had been right. She spread her arms, feeling the resistance of the wind.

“Get down from there, Nicola. Come back here. Whatever this is about, we’ll sort it, alright? Nothing is so bad you can’t live through it.”

Nicola laughed. Now, _that_ was funny. There were plenty of things that could not be lived through. Everyone died of something in the end, be it cancer, dementia, organ failure, a car crash, murder, a fall…or a jump. This was one of those things that could not be survived, for surviving was not worth the effort. What was the point of existing only to feel horrendous all the time? It was no life, constantly having a knot in the stomach and a race in the head. She wasn’t even able to do the most basic of things – lifts were a no-go, as were trains, locked rooms, the Underground…the list went on. What use was she if she could not even keep a data loss secret in a building full of people she _knew_ she couldn’t tell?

She looked up at the sky; it had turned a threatening shade of grey, the clouds closing in around her.

“We can talk about this. How about that? We can work out a plan.”

“Because plans usually work out so brilliantly where I’m involved!” she sneered, more at herself than at anyone else. “I think I more than proved that today!”

“Is that what this is about? You fucked up the data loss strategy and now you deserve to die? Is that a reason to top yourself?”

Nicola closed her eyes. “I wouldn’t expect you, of all people, to understand.”

There was a laugh from behind her, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. It actually scared her.

“Try me.”

She tilted forwards, willing herself to let her body fall. But a hand caught hers, and she steadied herself; as frustrating as it was, she could not bring herself to risk taking anyone with her. The grip was tight, almost painful.

She tried to pull her hand back, but she lost her balance in the wind; her foot slid from under her and, knowing she was attached to another living, breathing person who probably did not particularly wish to drown in the Thames, struggled wildly get her foot back onto the parapet.

“No, Nicola!”

“Let go!”

“No!”

There was a collective gasp from the pavement behind.

“Look, will you lot just _go_?! There’s nothing to see here! I _will_ get her down!”

Nicola could hear the shuffling of feet, of people reluctantly putting their trust in someone else to save the suicidal idiot on Westminster Bridge.

“There you are, Nicola, everyone’s gone. Just you and me. You can come back here and nobody will see you back down.”

“You think that’s why I’m up here?” she laughed incredulously. “No, I’m up here because I can’t take any more!”

“Any more what?”

“Any more of _me_ ,” she said. Tears fell involuntarily down her cheeks as she realised just what she meant by that.

The outside world was not the thing she could not continue with. Those people who went about their lives like normal human beings were not the problem. She was the problem. She was the problem for which she had no solution, bar this one. The idea of getting down from this bridge, back into existence, was impossible to bear. There was nothing left for her; everything she touched died. Every relationship she held one end of fell to pieces. Every time she saw her children, they resented her a little more. And James…well, she was fairly sure he was shagging his secretary. What other reason was there to keep a secretary who could not pass on a message the seventh time it was relayed to her?

She was the broken link. She was the piece that didn’t fit, no matter where she tried to force herself into. It just didn’t work. All she gained was the reminder that she did not belong.

Her heart thumped against her ribs as she thought of the water below. Would it be like stepping into a cold bath? Or with the height, would it be as hard as hitting concrete? But what did that matter? Either way, it was an end. Whether gentle or hard, she would not survive it. Even if she felt some physical pain, she was not going to be alive long enough to care about it.

Nicola tried again to pull her hand out of that vice-like grasp.

“Let me go!”

But their hands remained entwined; Nicola was almost sure her hand was going to bruise with the grip and pressure around it. It pulled again, but this time, she was ready for it. Her body did not move backwards, nor did it topple forwards.

The water called her, for it promised relief. Peace. It was time to part with this world, to leave it with a Nicola Murray-shaped hole that nobody would want to fill; the last thing the world needed was another person as completely pathetic as Nicola Murray. “Let go,” she whispered. “Just let me go.” It almost surprised her when the warm hand left hers. Was that acceptance, or merely a change of tack?

“Please don’t do this.”

“I’m sorry.”

Nicola’s knees bent; she was unsure of whether it was her mind readying her body for the jump, or if her knees had simply gone weak. She leaned forwards and lowered her arms. Her heart beat so quickly that Nicola thought it might stop. There was a certain lightness about her, a lack of weight, like she might just float down the Thames when she hit the water. Physically, her body was in overdrive. But it was the most relaxed she had felt in so, so long. Longer than she could remember. Knowing the end was near soothed her.

She closed her eyes. She threw her weight forwards, and waited to hit the freezing waters of the Thames.

She never did.

A pair of arms had wrapped themselves around her waist before her feet had left the parapet. Suddenly, her feet hit the cold, flat pavement. She opened her eyes. The bright lights stunned her vision, lingering when she blinked. People stared as they passed her. Those strong arms did not loosen their hold on her; she allowed her fingers to brush the hands that sat on her sides. The hands that had prevented her escape. She could hear the heavy breathing of a human being running solely on adrenaline. The smell of washing powder and whisky tethered her to the present.

There was a face buried in her hair; she could have sworn she felt a kiss planted to the top of her head, but she was not stupid enough to believe it. She was thick, but she wasn’t delusional. The only reason she was not drowning in the river was that humans, whatever the situation, had this infuriating need for heroism, and lacked the acceptance that some of their peers were just not cut out for survival.

She struggled against that paralysing hold, but it was too strong.

Suddenly, she was turned; her head was pressed onto a hammering heart. She had never heard another’s heart beat as hers did all too often – too fast and too hard.

“Never do that again.”

She wanted to say that she would do it again. And again. And again, until she succeeded. But if she said that, she would never be released to try it, and she might have been given no choice in the matter at all if there were any medical interventions.

And besides, here was a person who, for whatever reason, seemed to care. Whether through the guilt of helping push her to the edge, or because the idea of any human being dying was unbearable, she found herself cared about. She could not pretend to understand it – certainly, it was nothing to do with the idea of the world losing Nicola Murray – but she felt somewhat compelled to respect it.

She was allowed to look up, and all she found was a face filled with the most intense combination of fear, sorrow and relief she had ever seen. An arm tightened around her waist and held her close, like she might fade into nothingness.

“What the fucking hell are you thinking, Nic’la?” It came out raspy, like the breath forcing it out was broken. “Of all the things, all fucking reckless, fucking stupid, dangerous things to do! You could’ve fucking died!”

“That’s kind of the fucking point,” snapped Nicola.

She didn’t get a reply; instead, a hand held her head close into that heart again, the thing still pounding like it was trying to smash through the ribcage. For once, Malcolm Tucker was lost for words.


	3. Chapter 3

Nicola could not possibly say how long they stood there. All she knew was she was still barefoot, but for her tights, and she had no way to run from Malcolm. The grip he had on her, the sheer strength in his arms, frightened her. It was that sense of being trapped that came with lifts and trains; though there were no walls around her, she was presented with no opportunity to remove herself from the situation, and that was just as bad.

Malcolm Tucker, the evil demon of Downing Street, clung to her, and it felt like he did so like he clung to life itself. It was not normal. This was not the way of things. That man didn’t have a conscience, much less a heart. There was no reason for him to be so desperate to keep her alive. If anything, he would have been the one who she’d have expected to throw her off a bridge himself. Christ knows, she infuriated him. He hated her. Despised her. And yet he was here. It was nonsensical. The world was on its head.

“Malcolm, you’re hurting me,” she said, the words muffled against his chest. His embrace was so tight that she could feel her muscles starting to ache.

“Better than you fucking hurting yourself,” he replied.

“You’re overreacting,” she accused.

“ _I’m_ overreacting?! You’re the one who just went to take a fucking ropeless bungee jump off Westminster fucking Bridge!”

His heart beat hard against her face. How amazing it was that his body was warm. He spent so much time terrorising her like a snarling barracuda, it was all too easy to forget Malcolm Tucker wasn’t coldblooded at all. As she stood with her head against his warm chest, she realised this was the first time anyone had held her in such a long time. She couldn’t recall the last time someone hugged her. Even her kids didn’t want to hug her anymore. Human contact was a luxury she no longer had.

Despite the fact it was Malcolm Tucker, and he embodied all that was cruel and ugly in her world, Nicola stopped trying to find a way out of his hold on her. She allowed her body to relax just a little, leaning into Malcolm rather than stiffening herself away from him. Loathe as she was to admit it, she was safe here, for as long as he held her in his arms. She could not make any decisions if she could not even move.

She closed her eyes.

Malcolm’s heart did not slow down. His breathing was still ragged. He kept clutching her closer than she could have ever imagined possible. And it hit her, the reason he could not let her go – he was scared. Her actions, her wish to put an end to her existence, had put the fear into him.

What she had done had put Malcolm – normally the most deranged yet oddly distant man she’d ever known – into a place where he felt the need to hold her and refuse to let her leave. His words rang in her ears: “You could’ve fucking died.”

And she almost did. She had put herself over the edge of that bridge; it just so happened Malcolm acted quickly enough to pull her back before she went beyond the point of no return. She nearly died. What would have happened if she had died? Who would Malcolm have called? How would he have explained it?

What had she done?

Nicola opened her eyes, staring past Malcolm’s arms and onto the river. Her mouth fell open, her whole body trembling. The enormity of what she had done…she had almost forced Malcolm to watch someone take their own life and, no matter how much he hated her, that was bound to be as traumatising as watching a murder, or watching death on a battlefield. She had no right to inflict that on him, did she? The man might not have a heart, but he had a psyche that was as susceptible to trauma as anyone else’s. Even Malcolm Tucker was not psychologically infallible. If she was going to end her life, she had to do it where nobody could see her. The only problem was that Malcolm would not let her out of his sight; she knew that.

Her legs were numb. She couldn’t feel the ground, bare as her feet were. “Alright,” Malcolm whispered, hoisting her body upwards. “You’re in fucking shock now. Fucking brilliant, Nic’la. You’re a fucking-” he ranted, but he stopped suddenly. Perhaps he had thought better of degrading her further, or maybe he just couldn’t find the appropriate insult for her level of insanity.

She allowed her arms to wrap around him, using him to keep herself upright.

“Why, Nicola?” he asked her. “Why do something so fucking extreme?”

But she didn’t have an answer ready for him. How was she supposed to tell him that she was distanced from her own children, and that she was nearly certain her husband was cheating? There was no way to explain the extent of her self-loathing, or the depth of her despair for her own useless nature. Nicola didn’t know how to say that she felt everything so intensely that she could not brush any of it off.

There was only one thing she knew how to say. “I’ve been taking body blows all day, and I had to make a choice,” she said.

Malcolm put his hands on her shoulders, still gripping so hard that she knew there would be finger-shaped bruises there in the morning, and glared at her. “So your choice was to fucking jump off Westminster Bridge, leave four kids without a fucking mother, a husband without his wife and DoSAC without a fucking Minister?!” he shouted, shaking her by the shoulders. “ _That_ is the fucking solution?! Did you not think it might be fucking smart to just sit down and say to someone, ‘Hey, I could use a chat, ‘cause I feel like shit and I don’t know what to fucking do,’ rather than run off on your own and try to fucking kill yourself?!”

“Can’t even do that right, can I?” she snapped. She couldn’t help herself. It was the epitome of incompetence, that she couldn’t even kill herself without it going wrong.

“No, that’s the problem, Nic’la! Killing yourself seems to be the one thing you have an actual fucking skill for, ‘cause you would’ve fucking done it if I’d not caught you!”

“Oh, what a fucking hero!” laughed Nicola. It startled her – she really did sound utterly unhinged as that shrill noise broke through the night air. “Mr. Fucking Incredible swoops in and saves the fucking day!”

“You’re not on the fucking moral high ground here, Nic’la!” Malcolm reminded her.

“I know!” she shouted. “Believe me, I fucking know!”

“Why didn’t you fucking _say_ something?!” he demanded. “Come and speak to somebody instead of going for the fucking dramatic finish!”

Nicola shook her head in disbelief, that same piercing laugh escaping her. “You really think I have someone to fucking talk to? Someone I can say something like _that_ to?!”

“You could’ve told me!”

“You?!” cackled Nicola. “You? The man who calls me mental and fucking retarded?! You, the man with less empathy than the fucking Yorkshire Ripper?!” Even in under the darkening sky, she could see Malcolm’s face pale at the accusation. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “That was out of order.”

His fingers still dug into her shoulders, but she didn’t want it to stop. It was bizarre, but the fear and the anger that fuelled that grip meant something to her that he couldn’t possibly understand. This was the physical proof that he, whatever his rationalisation, cared enough about her that he had lost the tiniest bit of his own control. That was something she had never experienced before. It was one person giving a fuck about her, in a life filled with the indifferent and the hateful.

And even if that person was the man who never could see anything wrong with destroying another person, who would have gleefully thrown her under the nearest moving vehicle, it made all the difference in the world.

Here was a human being, in all his flawed glory. He was everything she was not. He was like every other normal person – imperfect, but human. His flaws were colossal, but he knew them, and they were his. He owned them. They had purpose, direction; they were his tools, not hindrances. They did not eat at him from the inside out until he despised every cell in his body and mind. He had mastered living as a human being, while she stood here in bits, barely human herself.

“Listen, Nic’la, I’ll take you home. See your kids. Talk to James.”

“Talk to James,” Nicola repeated with a mirthless laugh. “You’re fucking joking.”

“No, I’m not.”

Nicola took a step towards him. “Don’t take me home. I can’t face that yet,” she confessed.

Malcolm stared at her. “What do you want me to do? I can’t fucking leave you here, knowing you can’t be fucking trusted with your own life.” Nicola couldn’t answer that for him. That, she knew, was Malcolm’s decision to make, and she would not force him to make a decision he could not defend. “Right, come with me,” he sighed. He bent down and passed her the pair of shoes that lay discarded on the pavement.

“Where?” she asked, putting those damned high heels back on. He took her by the arm and frogmarched her down the road. “Malcolm! Where are you taking me?!”

“A and E,” he answered. “You need-”

“No!” she yelled. “No, Malcolm, no!” She fought his grip with all her strength, but he was so much bigger than her that it did little good. “Don’t you fucking dare-”

“Then what do you suggest I do?!” he bellowed in her face, standing over her in his considerable height. She could feel her body shrink in fear. He had done this before, and with even more fury and intimidation, but he had never done this to her with such a sense of urgency. He was distressed; she had never seen Malcolm Tucker truly distressed before. “I can’t live with the idea of sending someone off to die, Nic’la!”

“You fucking hate me!” she giggled, shrill and cold once more. “I’d have thought you’d be the first to push me off that bridge, not pull me back!”

Malcolm’s face froze in an expression of indignation. “You can’t possibly fucking believe that.”

Nicola looked down at her feet. She did believe that. “If I were you, I’d throw me off a bridge,” she mumbled.

“Yeah, I think we’ve fucking ascertained that, thanks,” he quipped. He stepped back and ran a hand through his hair; Nicola knew he was trying to find a solution they could both cope with. The way he stood, she could see the stress she was causing him. His slender body was tense and rigid, but his eyes were wide and frantic. “Change of plan,” he said. “You’re coming home with me. To mine. Where you will sleep, and you will not try anything else of this fucking deranged nature.”

“And if I refuse?” challenged Nicola.

“Then I really will call 999, tell them I have just stopped you committing suicide, and they may well take you as an inpatient,” he retorted. “At which stage, your children and your husband will know exactly what has happened tonight, whether you like it or not, and I will be fucking hard pressed to stifle the media’s coverage of the Demented Lady of DoSAC!”

“You have this all fucking figured out, haven’t you?”

“I’ve got to have this all fucking figured out,” Malcolm growled, “because _if_ I don’t, I have no way of knowing what’ll fucking happen to you and your fucking malfunctioning mind!”

Nicola glared at him. She had never expected him to back down completely, of course, but she had hoped he might give her some rope – even if it was only to hang herself with. But he was determined that she was not leaving this bridge unless to a place of safety, and it was clear he felt the only place of safety was under a doctor’s watchful eye, or else his own. “If I go with you, Malcolm, you lay off me. No jibes about my claustrophobia or my fucking anxiety or my family or…or anything. You don’t give me any fucking grief.”

“No,” he muttered, linking his arm securely with hers in what Nicola knew was an act of protection rather than affection. “I reckon you give yourself enough of that without my fucking help.”


	4. Chapter 4

Nicola sat in Malcolm’s living room, the events that landed her here spinning wildly through her mind. Malcolm, in turn, was watching her. He tried to pretend he wasn’t, but she caught him looking away, his attention suddenly grabbed by the nearest mundane distraction. He swilled the whisky in the bottom of his glass, staring into the miniature whirlpool that formed in the centre. “You should be in fucking A and E,” he muttered. “What were you fucking thinking?” he demanded, pointing to his own temple. “You fucking defective -”

“Fuck you, Malcolm,” Nicola cut across him. He looked up at her, his bright blue eyes boring into her like a laser. “Fuck you.” She set her own whisky glass down in the table with a thud. “You said you wouldn’t do this.”

“I’m not doing it for fucking sport!” he snapped at her.

“ _There’s_ a fucking first.”

“Oh, fuck off back to Westminster Bridge then,” he spat, waving his arms madly in a gesture in the general direction of the door.

Nicola’s blood ran cold. Why had she trusted him? She knew this was who he was – there was no possibility of ever changing that. It had been sheer stupidity to give him the benefit of the doubt. How could he be trusted, when she knew him to be a bully and a tyrant, the type of tormentor who found his prey’s flaws and endlessly hammered them home?

She got to her feet, not taking her eyes off him. His expression of frustration turned to one of horror.

“I didn’t mean-”

“Oh, yes, you did, Malcolm,” Nicola snorted. “You think I don’t know you’d happily have killed me yourself the day I was made fucking Secretary of State?”

The air between them crashed into a quiet chaos. All that went unsaid fell around her until her ears rang with the silence, until Malcolm stood up and shattered it. “You,” he said, pointing at her, “have lost the fucking place.” Though Nicola had never heard this term before, she reckoned it was a thoroughly Glaswegian way of saying she’d lost her mind. “I am not fucking out to get you. Everything I do is to make sure our party isn’t forced out of fucking government.”

Nicola stared into Malcolm’s eyes and tried to dissect what he was thinking. His guard was up, but he was also – as insane a concept as it seemed – highly emotional. It was told in the way he threw his arms and hands about like their extended movement might somehow achieve whatever it was he wanted to achieve. His eyes were still wide, still agitated. They betrayed Malcolm’s capacity for empathy, and proved that not everything on this Earth was explicable. Before now there had been no indication that Malcolm was capable of really caring about anyone or anything. And yet here he stood, his body telling her a story of a man whose mind was hell bent on keeping Nicola Murray safe, even if he did slip up along the way.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” he said. He had slid the other way now, no longer outwardly and obviously passionate; his voice had lowered to a near whisper, like he was afraid of the impact his words might have upon her. “It was a joke. Just a stupid, ugly fucking joke.”

“Christ, Malcolm,” she sighed.

“What?”

She opened her mouth, but closed it when she realised she didn’t even know what she wanted to say. There was so much she wanted to tell him, to let out of this fucking rotting soup pot of a mind, but no way to put it into anything he might have a hope of understanding. Her face was giving her away, and she knew that; she never could trust her face to lie for her. Even as a child, she had never been able to come home and tell her mother she’d had an amazing day at school, when in fact she had been relentlessly bullied. As a young woman, she had never managed to convince her father that James was treating her as her dad believed he ought to. And now, in middle age, her face did nothing to help her tell Malcolm Tucker that she knew how to survive.

Malcolm stepped towards her. The prevailing glint in his eye was no longer one of fear, anger or distress. It was curiosity. It almost made Nicola want to see the look on her own face. She felt such a blizzard of pain, confusion, fear, emptiness, loneliness…she could not know which emotions made it to her face.

Nicola reached out and touched his arms, remembering how utterly safe she had been when they held her on Westminster Bridge. The contact, the embrace of a human being, meant more to her than she could ever have imagined. It had shocked her, really, that she had been so starved of physical affection, and yet hadn’t noticed until Malcolm held her and point blank refused to release her. How could she have got to that stage of isolation and never known it? It seemed impossible. But then, didn’t they say that a hand boiled in gradually heated water wouldn’t notice any pain until the damage was done? And the damage, she feared, was well and truly done.

He was warm. Even through the sleeves of his shirt, she could feel the warmth of his skin. He was so utterly, undeniably human. And she was not.

She was not human. She could not be saved.

The knowledge broke her. It tore her heart in two. There was nothing left of her but ruined pieces and the need to end this suffering.

“I’m…” she began. His eyes met hers, searching for some sort of sense in what must have been a terrifying situation for him. “I’m already dead, Malcolm.”

“You are not dead, Nic’la,” Malcolm argued. “I’m standing here, fucking looking at you.”

“Do you have to take _everything_ fucking literally?”

“Do you always have to go round in a fucking square circle half a dozen times before you tell me what the fuck you actually mean?!”

Fucking hell, he infuriated her beyond all she believed comprehensible. She grabbed his face with both hands – she needed him to look into her eyes and actually _see_ – and she said, “Look at me, Malcolm! Can’t you see it? I’m-”

“Dead behind the eyes,” he finished for her.

Finally, he saw it. “That’s why I can’t live,” she said. “Everything I do is fucking wrong because I’m not a person anymore.”

But he wasn’t listening. She didn’t need to wait for the reply that would never come to know that. His eyes were locked onto hers; the blue shone in the light of the lamp beside him, and Nicola knew he’d stopped listening the moment he managed to find exactly what it was she meant. He was staring into her eyes with such intensity that Nicola wanted to look away, but couldn’t. His gaze wasn’t harsh or judgemental, which was uncommon in itself. It was a look of sadness.

This was part of the reason she never spoke up about this sensation of being lifeless inside. It made people sad, and she didn’t want to be the cause of that. She didn’t want to be the one who filled Malcolm Tucker with sadness. Filling him with anger, frustration, hatred, impatience and the wish to tear her limb from limb, she could handle. That was the effect she – and a number of others – had on Malcolm on a regular basis. But to make him sad? No. That was not something she wanted.

Nicola realised suddenly that she was still holding him by the face; he had not thrown her off. He was allowing her to touch him, though he probably remained oblivious to the magnitude of her need for contact. Her skin against another’s gave her back some of her humanity. She had skin, just like him. She had heard his heart beating just as hers did. And he breathed the same air as she did, and when adrenaline took over, his ability to breathe normally fell, just like her. How could they be the same and yet be so different?

Her torn heart just wanted something to cling to. Something that might make the night bearable. Otherwise, that fraction of her that whispered that she should end this might present an argument convincing enough to make her go and do it. It seemed like the one thing she had tonight was Malcolm, and he wasn’t leaving without a fight.

“I’m alone,” she confessed.

“You said you had fucking loads of friends.”

“I lied. They’re the mums at the school gate and the people I went to university with,” she said. “They’re not people I can turn to when I don’t know if I can survive the night.”

“You’ve got a husband for that.”

“James?” Nicola smiled slightly. “All he fucking does at home is eat and sleep. The only time he speaks is to tell me I’m doing something wrong or to shout and curse at the kids for being kids. It’s like having a lodger who doesn’t pay rent. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’s shagging his secretary.” Malcolm grimaced for a moment. Had he finally realised she was not exaggerating when she said she didn’t have anyone? “I don’t have human contact that isn’t about fucking politics or the media,” she blurted out. Fuck it. She couldn’t be any more vulnerable if she tried, anyway. “Even my kids don’t want a hug anymore. James hasn’t touched me in months, ever since he started at fucking Albany. I don’t _touch_ anyone, Malcolm, and nobody touches me. And when you held me on that bridge-”

“Stop,” he said. There was a haunted look on his face, but Nicola could not know why. He pushed her hair behind her ear. “Calm down,” he said.

She closed her eyes, only to find her heart was racing, and her legs shook with the anxiety of baring her pain to this contradiction of a man. When she opened her eyes, Malcolm was closer than she had expected. “What are you doing?”

“Fucking human contact,” he said, “if that’s what might fucking keep you alive.” He took her into a close embrace, her head resting against his chest. She could feel his chin on the top of her head. Why was he doing this for her? Why wasn’t he telling her she was off her fucking head and throwing her out of his house?

This was everything Nicola’s life was not meant to be. She was supposed to be fierce and strong, a mother, a wife, a politician, a Cabinet minister…she was not supposed to be standing here in Malcolm’s arms, and that was not supposed to be what saved her.

But it did.

She tried not to cry. She really did. Up until now, she had, for the most part, managed it. But now she sobbed into his chest. It spilled out; there was nothing to keep it down anymore. It was like being sick – she didn’t want to, but she didn’t have the choice. Swallowing it back hadn’t worked, and denying herself the right to feel hopeless did nothing to stem the tears. Whether she liked it or not, her body wanted her to cry.

Malcolm rubbed her back; for the first time, she was thankful for knowing him. Who else was enough of a masochist to take her home and try and get through to her? She let her hands claw around the shirt on his back, keeping him near like he might evaporate like steam. His body was warm against hers. How had she gone so long without this? It was everything. It was the very basis of being a living, breathing person – to have contact with other living, breathing people.

Nicola couldn’t remember ever feeling this safe in her adult life. The one man who was supposed to keep her safe – the man she married – was not the man whose arms protected her from herself. No, James was the man who helped drive her to try and harm herself, and was too ignorant and indifferent to actually notice what he did to his wife when he starved her of affection and love.

It was Malcolm Tucker who kept her safe, but he was also another one who helped put her in danger in the first place. His remarks about her intelligence and her fitness to be called a human being, whether he meant them to or not, stuck with her, chanting over and over that he was right and there was no point trying. He had even told her to go back to the bridge, even if it was only an angry joke. The difference between James and Malcolm, however, was that Malcolm had realised he was wrong to say that, and assured her that he didn’t mean it. James wouldn’t have bothered.

Malcolm put his fingers to Nicola’s cheeks and wiped away her tears. “Don’t cry,” he sighed. “You’ll be okay.”

“But I won’t, will I?” Nicola retorted. “I’ve got nothing left, Malcolm. I _am_ alone.”

The words echoed this time, bouncing off the walls until she couldn’t stop hearing them.

_I am alone. I am alone. I am alone._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hellooooo!
> 
> My mother is currently moving all the bloody living room furniture to see how big a suite she could fit into the living room. Welcome to my world. And then I'm moving - hopefully - on Tuesday, to a flat of my own. Help meeeee...
> 
> Anyway. About to have tea then head out to meet a friend, so uploaded this before I start on pasta bake.
> 
> Yes, I'm hyper. One too many tins of Diet Coke, I'm afraid...

Malcolm picked up his keys. Nicola stared up at him, curious as to what he was thinking. “We’re away for a walk,” he told her. “Parliament Hill.” She eyed him suspiciously; was this just a ruse to get her out and home, or to the hospital? So she didn’t move. “It’s not a fucking trick, Nicola,” he sighed. “I’m not going to do anything fucking out of order. I just want to try something.” He picked up a pair of trainers from the corner of the room and added, “They’re my sister’s but they should fit you.”

Nicola took off her heels and put Malcolm’s sister’s Converse on. She tried not to overthink what his plan was, but she couldn’t help but wonder. He was not known for being a warm-hearted man. Was he about to try and shock sense into her? Was that his plan?

She followed him out the door to the car. “Won’t we need a torch?” she asked, looking up at the dark sky.

“There’s a couple in the boot,” he replied. “Unlike you, I have the fucking sense to carry the essentials in my car. One night stranded on the fucking A9 is enough to teach you, believe me.”

Nicola didn’t answer him at all. All she could think was that being stranded on the A9 meant he lived a life – he didn’t shy away from the risks of driving in bad weather or in an unreliable car or whatever the fuck got him stranded in the first place. He had stories to tell. Real ones. And she didn’t. Her life contracted as a teenager, when her anxiety spiralled and her claustrophobia reached its peak. It contracted again when she married James and had children, always doing as they said, living for them and not herself. She had never expanded it to the vision of her life she had as a young girl.

She watched him drive; he was a mystery. He was neither warm nor cold. He wasn’t kind, but he wasn’t evil, either. Since she met him, she had viewed him as calculating, volatile, malevolent, vicious, hostile, hard-hearted – generally all that was bad in the average person, rolled into one massive, terrifying man called Malcolm Tucker. But now, Nicola could not in good conscience maintain that view of him. He had saved her life. He had held her when he felt she needed to be held. He had asked her the right questions, which was more than most people knew to do. He cared, and she couldn’t very well keep labelling a person who cared about her wellbeing as malevolent.

Did he need a label? Couldn’t he just be Malcolm?

He parked the car and took a large backpack from the boot. “When my wee sister was a teenager,” he said, hauling the rucksack onto his back, “she had depression and an eating disorder.” It was a rare glimpse into the life of Malcolm Tucker. It was too rare, too precious, to risk shattering with any interruption of Nicola’s. “And at one point, every night, I’d have to look after her. She couldn’t sleep, eat, read, talk…she couldn’t do anything but sit on the floor and try not to hurt herself. Mum and Dad didn’t have the first fucking idea what to do. Can’t say I was much wiser,” he admitted, handing Nicola a torch. “But when she got really fucking bad, when I thought she might do real harm to herself, I took her up to Springburn Park. Midnight, three in morning, didn’t matter a fuck.”

Nicola had never considered the idea of Malcolm’s position as a brother and a son. Did his family accept him and his mannerisms, or was he kinder and gentler with them? Or perhaps he had learned his ways from them in the first place.

“A couple of years ago,” he continued, “Fiona relapsed. So she left her daughter with her husband in Glasgow and came down here so I could look after her, just like I did thirty years ago.”

“I had no-”

“Why would you have any idea?” he said. “I don’t tell people about Fiona. Shatters the fucking illusion.”

Of course. He needed to be seen as ruthless, and that meant never letting on he was a big brother.

“We came up here when she couldn’t sit at peace,” he explained. They were atop Parliament Hill now; it was dark, even with the torchlight guiding their way. He came off the path and set down four lit torches onto the ground. “And the only way to keep her fucking safe was to convince her, even if it was only for a few minutes, that she was somewhere else.”

Out of his bag, he pulled a small CD player and switched it on. He pressed the shuffle button and drew himself back up to his full height. Malcolm took her hands. “Close your eyes.”

“Malcolm-”

“For once in your fucking life, do as you’re told!” Cheering came from the stereo; whatever he was playing, it was a live concert. “This is Fiona’s favourite CD.”

Nicola closed her eyes, just as Malcolm had told her to. An electric guitar sounded one note – that was all the introduction this song seemed to have. _The landlords came, the peasant trials, to the sacrifice of men; through the past and that quite darkly; the presence once again_. Nicola, her eyes still closed, felt Malcolm lead her into a slow dance, in time with the music’s pace. _In the name of capital, establishment, improvers, it’s a name; the hidden truth, the hidden lies; that once nailed you to the pain…_

Suddenly, the music was faster, and Malcolm was dancing faster, and she opened her eyes so as not to fall over; her balance when she had to dance never could be trusted. _Of a dance called America; they danced it round, and waited at the turns; for America, they danced their ladies round_.

Nicola laughed. She couldn’t help it. She felt ridiculous, like she was twenty-one again, but she loved it. The torchlight on the grass made sure she could see where she was going, but it also allowed her to feel like this was not just Parliament Hill in the dead of night. This was somewhere to dance, to forget who she was, to revel in the mystery of the man who had taken her here in the first place.

_The candles of enlightenment, once lit, they say don’t burn; turn the darkest room of suffering to a greater state of pain; tell me that’s behind you now; don’t greet me, no, don’t meet your dying blind; it’s our very last stand, together! So let’s sever, no regrets._

Malcolm twirled her under his arm as the beat of the music thumped through the ground under their feet. _They did a dance called America; they danced it round, and waited at the turns; for America, they danced their ladies round_.

It was amazing. Even as the cold night air bit through her, she was lost in the sound of drums and electric guitars and a cheering crowd. Malcolm’s hands, the way he pulled and spun her, kept her dancing. Nicola Murray never was the kind to dance her heart out, but for Malcolm Tucker, she did. Life ran through her bloodstream. She was living. She was breathing. And her heart was beating hard against her chest, but for once, it didn’t do that out of anxiety. _Now there were days that once held confidence, strength of will and mind; the camouflage that washed your fathers; your sons’ and daughters’ time; another tongue, my love, my island, you’ve gone international; and all the praying men of God, who stood and watched it all go on…_

Malcolm pulled her close, her chest pressed hard against his and his arm tight around her waist, and quickened their step. _They did a dance called America; they danced it round, and waited at the turns; for America, they danced their ladies round_. _For a dance called America; they danced it round, and waited at the turns; for America, they danced their ladies round_.

She really had forgotten what living felt like, hadn’t she? This was what people did. They held each other, they danced with one another, they enjoyed themselves and each other. The lights of London below them blurred more the faster Malcolm had her dancing. _For a dance called America; they danced it round, and waited at the turns; for America, they danced their ladies round_. She was breathless, unaccustomed as she was to this physical exertion. Even a lifetime of taking the stairs did not prepare her for the cool air that forced itself into her airways, or the harsh use of her calf muscles. Maybe Malcolm thought her fitter than she really was.

The song ended, and Malcolm left her to press pause on the machine. She looked around her – they were entirely alone, but she didn’t doubt anyone who did happen across them would presume them fucking mental and give them the widest possible berth.

But as Malcolm came back to her, she was quite startled to realise she was smiling. Grinning. Not that false smile she wore in that room with all those fucking journalists while Malcolm tried to pretend she wasn’t the biggest failure on two legs, but a real smile. She felt the warmth of it rise through her; she hadn’t realised she was cold until she wasn’t anymore.

And it was him. It was all him. He was doing this for her because he believed it would help. He had told her he would put her to bed and have done with it all, and yet here they were on Parliament Hill. Malcolm Tucker had gone out of his way for her. And most importantly, he seemed to believe Nicola was as worthy of his time and effort as his sister was, or he would never have done this, would he?

She gazed into his eyes, wondering what else he was made of.

In that moment, she couldn’t quite say what came over her. It made no sense. None of it made the slightest bit of sense. But she kissed him. She reached up, took his face into her hands and softly kissed him. He did hesitate – she felt his lips still against hers for half a moment – but he didn’t pull away. He didn’t stop her. He deepened their kiss, and pulled her in by the hips.

She didn’t give a fuck that she was married; she didn’t _feel_ married, so what was the point of trying to save that particular union from dissolution?

Nicola pulled back for air. In Converse, she had to be at least half a foot shorter than him. Malcolm was looking down on her, an expression of fright and awe upon his sharp features. He was _everything_. He was everything about life she didn’t know. All the grey areas lay within Malcolm Tucker. All the most of obscure shades of colour were held in his heart and body. He was all the colours of the spectrum. Good _and_ evil. Kind _and_ cruel. Warm _and_ cold. Analytical _and_ emotional. Coarse _and_ compassionate. It wasn’t an either or with Malcolm. He was both ends of every spectrum, and all that lay in between.

How could she possibly settle for life in black and white when all this new wonder was right in front of her?

“Still feel dead?” asked Malcolm.

She sat down on the grass, and he followed suit. Staring at the stars above, she considered her answer. No, she did not, in this moment, feel dead. Every nerve in her body buzzed with life and hope. But she knew herself. She knew who she was, and what her mind’s patterns were. And there would come a time in the foreseeable future that she would lose her newfound life. As besotted with the idea of living as she was now, it couldn’t possibly last. It was the way of things, after all.

However, she now knew there was someone there for her. Someone who seemed to understand, who had experience with another person whose minds played tricks on them.

“Tell me about your sister,” she said, rather than try to formulate a coherent answer for him.

Malcolm sighed. “Fiona…when she was about fourteen, she developed this…fucking _obsession_ with losing weight. There wasn’t anything wrong with her weight – she’s built like me and always has been, for fuck’s sake – but she controlled every fucking calorie that entered and left her body. Nobody could tell if she was depressed because of the eating disorder or had the eating disorder because she was depressed. It was the fucking eighties – we barely acknowledged mental illness at all back then.”

“How much younger is she?”

“Six years.”

Nicola tried to imagine a twenty-year-old Malcolm caring for his fourteen-year-old sister; before tonight, she would have found the idea laughable. But it wasn’t laughable at all. It wasn’t what she had expected of him, but since when did her expectations of people turn out to be the reality?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!
> 
> Six days until I get broadband!
> 
> Today was spent with my grandparents. Remind me never to cycle drunk.

It was well after midnight before Malcolm took Nicola back to his home. She watched his every move as he relieved himself of his coat and his shoes. Nicola still had no idea what his plan for her was; he, at least on the surface, behaved like he was putting her first, but that idea went against all she knew about Malcolm Tucker.

Why did she keep thinking she knew him, anyway? She didn’t. She only knew what she had seen in the past two weeks, and the horror stories relayed to her by others. What right did she have to assume she knew everything he was? She had known nothing of a sister, let alone a sister for whom he had become a sort of carer. She had not known he had some idea of what happened to people whose minds turned against them, or that he had it in him to give a single fuck about what happened to her.

As she stepped into the living room and he switched on the lamp in the corner, she observed, “I don’t know you.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Nobody fucking knows me, Nicola.”

Nicola watched as Malcolm went to the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of wine. He glanced over at her, hesitating over something. “Are you okay to drink, or do you want fucking hot chocolate or something?” he asked her.

Stunned, Nicola opened her mouth to answer him, but couldn’t. He was so direct about it. The idea that she might be too mentally fragile to drink didn’t faze him at all. The only thing it prompted him to do was offer her an alternative. “I…” she began, but decided not to say that she was currently in awe of his attitude. “Honestly, I could do with a drink.”

Malcolm considered her for a moment, and eventually took out two glasses. She sat down on the sofa – the nearest place she could sit. It was almost a surprise when he sat down next to her and poured two glasses of wine. “If you start feeling like shit, Nic’la, you stop drinking and you _tell me_ ,” he warned her. “I don’t want you fucking jumping off my roof.”

Nicola didn’t answer him. She had learned long ago not to make any concrete promise about where her mental health would take her. Instead, she took a sip of wine and tried to think of something to say that didn’t betray how confused she was by him, and how utterly mixed her feelings for him now were.

She had never known that she could ever see Malcolm Tucker as she did now. He was no longer shouting at her like he had done on the bridge, or violently shaking her, or trying to drag her to the hospital, or lashing out, or dancing with her…he was simply with her.

Rather than speak, she stood up and looked around the room. There was a photograph of Malcolm with two women, one much older and one a few years younger; she could only presume they were his mother and his sister. There was another of him in what looked to be a forest, wearing cargo pants and hiking boots, with a small girl of about two on his shoulders. Nicola smirked and picked it up off its shelf. “Who is this?” she asked, holding the picture up for Malcolm to see.

He got to his feet and stepped towards her, taking the photo out of her hands. When he looked at it, he smiled. “Hannah. My niece. She’s six now.”

A moment of realisation hit Nicola. “The pictures, on your office wall.”

“Hannah likes paint a wee bit fucking too much. Every time I see her, I’m scrubbing the stuff off me for at least a fucking week,” he grumbled.

Nicola chuckled, and turned her attention back to the photograph. He did not seem intimidating or cruel in that picture. He was smiling – not the sarcastic smile he used so often, but a real, contented smile – and seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. “You look-”

“Careful,” he cautioned.

Nicola looked up at him. “Happy. Sweet.”

“I am _not_ fucking sweet,” he retorted.

Nicola took the photograph from him and waved it in his face. “I have photographic evidence.” She examined the photo further and smiled, “She’s beautiful, Malcolm.” Nicola glanced up at him and then back down at the picture, noting, “She has your eyes.”

There was something, she noticed now, strangely beautiful about him, too, but even Nicola had more sense than to say that to him. When she looked up at him, he was scrutinising her so closely that she shifted her weight uncomfortably. “You need help, Nic’la,” he told her. “Seriously. You might feel okay now but it will fucking come back, and I might not be there to fucking stop you doing it.”

She had been hoping that by opening up his personal life, it might distract him from hers. It clearly had not worked. “Please don’t,” she murmured. She felt one side of her face twitch upwards in a reflexive smile, one that came out of the instinct to defend the mind and was killed by the heart’s instinct to trust this totally inappropriate and untrustworthy man.

“Why did you kiss me?” he asked her.

“Because I wanted to.”

His face betrayed how taken aback he was by that simple answer. Perhaps he had been expecting her to say that she didn’t know, or that she was trying to channel the momentary joy he had given her, but that was not the case at all. “I kissed you because I wanted to,” she whispered.

“It can’t be that simple,” he insisted. “Nothing is ever that fucking simple with you.”

Nicola snorted. “It’s the one fucking simple thought I have.”

“You’re married.”

“By the skin of my fucking teeth,” Nicola replied. “I told you earlier. He’s a lodger who doesn’t pay rent.”

She turned her back on him. Why did he want to talk about that? If anyone could accept without question a kiss that happened in the heat of the moment, surely it was Malcolm Tucker. Christ, if anything, she would have expected him to exploit it.

And if he had not just stopped her committing suicide, he might have done.

Something clicked out of place. She didn’t know what. She couldn’t even know why. But she was no longer in the mood to humour Malcolm and his interrogations. Walking past him without a word or a look, she pressed the photograph into his chest and stood next to the coffee table. Everything was back the way it was three hours ago. The memory of her laughter, of Parliament Hill spinning around her as she danced in the torchlight with Malcolm, echoed in her mind, but faded into nothing at all.

Nicola picked up her glass, drained it and refilled it. “Nicola,” she heard Malcolm warn her. “Don’t do that.”

“Oh, don’t fucking tell me what to do,” she snapped. “Don’t you get your fill of that during the day?!”

She heard him put his photograph back in its rightful place; his footsteps drew near, and Nicola wondered for a moment what he would do. There was every chance she had just pushed him too far. His hand landed on top of hers, peeling her fingers from the glass. Malcolm touched her like he wasn’t afraid, or repulsed, or angry, as he probably had every right to be. He put the glass down on the table. “Why are you doing this?” he asked her. “Why are you so fucking hell bent on self-destruction?”

That was a question Nicola couldn’t answer. From that moment on the hill, she had felt okay – until approximately three minutes ago, when something had snapped out of place and put her back to square one.

She stared at the wall opposite. That wasn’t normal, was it?

Her mind was like one of those towers of playing cards her eldest daughter used to spend hours at a time building: move the wrong card the wrong way, and it all tumbled down.

“I don’t know what just happened,” she breathed. “I was fine. You saw me, Malcolm. I was okay.”

“Until I started asking fucking questions,” he pointed out. “Sometimes you’ve got to break before you can heal.”

“You were right,” Nicola said. “You were right. I’m mad. I’m fucking mental, aren’t I?”

“Probably,” he admitted. “But who on this Earth can really call themselves fucking sane?”

Nicola turned and faced Malcolm. He was looking at her like she was a mystery. The world was suddenly small, no bigger than the house outside this room. They were the only two people in that world; she couldn’t find a reason not to relent to the recklessness that tempted the most desperate part of her soul. The only thing that stopped her was that this was the same part of her that had told her to jump off Westminster Bridge. There were some of Nicola’s voices that could not be trusted, and she feared the one that urged her to take a leap into uncharted territory was out to destroy her.

After all, this sadist who stood before her was about as trustworthy and as venomous as the average cobra. And perhaps if she had not been set to self-destruct, she would have kept him away. Everything she knew was sensible screamed at her not to tell him anything else; everything her heart wanted – to be touched, to be listened to, to feel cared for – screamed at her to tell him everything.

Her heart screamed loudest.

“It’s like something slots out of place,” she explained. “I can see it being torn away in my head, like swiping a block out of a Jenga tower. And once whatever it is has fallen out of where it should be, everything else collapses. Take the wrong piece away and it’s catastrophic.”

“Like today.”

“I don’t know which piece it was that took everything down with it.”

Malcolm stared at her, like she was something that could not possibly exist. “You know it’s not fucking normal to be like that, don’t you?”

Nicola nodded her head. “I know.” She took a step forward, closing the gap between them. “It does different things to me. Sometimes it makes me want to die. Sometimes it makes me spiral into panic attacks, or makes me cry. Sometimes it stops me from giving a fuck about anyone else. Sometimes it makes me just want to be irresponsible.”

“And what’ll happen when it makes you want to die, or be fucking reckless, and there’s nothing there to stop you?”

“Then I will die,” she said simply. “Or end up in a situation I might regret.”

“Which one is it now?”

Nicola almost smiled at that. Someone was listening to what she was saying, without her having to shout. She stepped away from him and went back to the photographs. One caught her eye; it was old – by the clothes, she would have said it was the early seventies or late sixties. A boy of about nine or ten stood with a girl of about four, on the top of a caravan, both with jet black hair and huge grins. Nicola felt Malcolm approach behind her. “That was when my parents took us on holiday in the caravan,” he explained. “We were just outside Tomintoul, and they’d gone to the village to get bread. We climbed up onto the roof while they were gone. Last time they ever told me to watch Fiona for half an hour.”

“Always a wild one,” she observed.

Nicola turned around and bumped into his chest; he had been standing closer than she had thought. When she searched his face, she couldn’t disentangle one expression from another. There was no way to know what he was thinking.

All she knew was what _she_ was thinking. What _she_ wanted. And, as it turned out, she wanted what she wasn’t supposed to have. However, she wasn’t able to care about what she was meant and not meant to do. That was too much to think about, and her mind wasn’t up to it. She only had her heart to guide her, and her heart was made unruly by her mess of a mind and its current missing piece.

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

Taken aback, he frowned. “Don’t be fucking stupid, Nicola.”

“Why not?”

“You’re being-”

“Reckless?” she provided. “Yes. Let me be reckless where it’s safe.”

Malcolm’s eyes scanned her face, perhaps looking for some sort of sanity – right now, that wasn’t something he was likely to find. Nicola was surprised by how gently he pressed his lips into hers; it was almost timid. “If you don’t want to-” she interrupted, realising now how she might have put undue pressure onto him.

His lips still against hers, he said, “You know I won’t be doing fucking anything I don’t want to do.”

Nicola pulled him close, kissing him with more passion than she knew she had left in her. He stopped holding back; his hands travelled where they pleased, from her back to her waist to her hips, until one hand was firmly tangled into her hair. This was insane – Malcolm was probably right about that. But as they stumbled backwards, and she fell back onto the sofa with the weight of Malcolm Tucker pressed against her, Nicola saw one of the blocks shuffling back towards a vacant slot in her head. It was like with every move they made together, it moved closer to where it ought to have been.

She felt his mouth trailing kisses down her neck and her collar bone, and couldn’t suppress the low moan that came from the pit of her stomach. How long had it been since she felt so connected to another human being? Suddenly, her skin felt delicate and real, not just something that kept her together.

Fear shot through her, her body rigid; Malcolm was about to take Nicola apart, and she didn’t really know what he might expose.

“Nic’la?” he asked. “You okay?”

She looked into his eyes and saw that this was not reckless at all. The only reckless thing about this was that she hadn’t known how he would react. This – he – was safe.

“Yes,” she answered. She pulled him down and kissed him. “Just…give me something to remember.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll be glad (or perhaps dismayed) to discover that I have not, in fact, fallen off the face of the Earth. I have, however, been swamped by my two Irish kids, a trip to Edinburgh and London, and the total implosion of one side of my family. It's been fun.

Nicola left that house in the middle of the night. Well, at about five in the morning. She resolved to sneak into her own home, get showered and dressed, and head in to DoSAC to try and be a worthwhile Cabinet Minister. However, she was not optimistic about her own abilities in that field. She knew Malcolm had been right every single time he had miscalled her for her incompetence. That was the man who spoke the truth, not the man who tried to keep her alive through the night.

Walking out into the darkness as she stuffed her purse, phone and keys into her coat pocket, she realised that there was no way she could ask her driver to come and get her at this hour, and buses, trains and the Tube were a thought she could not tolerate. So, a taxi it was going to have to be. She sat on a bench and called for a taxi; as she waited for it, the chill in the air started to pierce her bones. How could she have been stupid enough to let Malcolm fucking Tucker mess with her head? The man was bad news, and it was moronic of her to believe any act of human decency he put on display for her.

And for her to sleep with him…what had she been thinking? She had just cheated on her husband. The rationale that it was nothing James had not already inflicted upon her did not hold up now that she was alone in the dim morning. How could she have done that? Convincing Malcolm had been quite easy, but she should never have done it.

Despite the deep self-loathing it generated, and the fact she had done it with the worst imaginable person, Nicola could not regret it. They had managed to patch one of the holes in her heart, however temporary a fix it might have been. It had been a respite from Hell. Somewhere in all of that she had found a spark of life she had forgotten could exist, even if it had been extinguished too quickly to have done her any good.

When the taxi appeared, Nicola suddenly felt removed from herself, like she watched herself get into the car, place her handbag and briefcases on the seat next to her, and give the driver her address. The journey was over far too quickly; perhaps she should have taken that as the indication of what she knew waited for her inside those walls. “Thank you,” she murmured to the driver as she paid him.

On her way up the garden path, Nicola searched her handbag for her keys; it was only after a moment of heart stopping panic that remembered she had put them, along with her phone and purse, in her coat pocket.

Her hands shook as she unlocked the front door, though she suspected it had little to do with the cool morning air. Quietly, trying her best to be silent, she closed the door and slipped off her shoes. Nicola did not want to be caught getting into the house half an hour before she should have been getting up for work.

“Mum?” a small voice whispered. Nicola looked up from the floor to see Katie, her sixteen-year-old daughter, sitting on the second stair from the bottom. “Why are you only just home now?”

“Late night at work, darling,” Nicola lied seamlessly. “I’ve just come home to take a shower and change, and then I’m going back in.”

Katie got to her feet and put her arms around Nicola. “Love you, Mum,” she sighed.

“What have I done to earn this?” asked Nicola.

“You spend so much time at work and everyone slags you off, but I know you’re doing it because you want to make life better for people.”

Though she could not know it, Katie had never been so far off the mark. Nicola didn’t even know why she was in her job now – she was simply coasting, with the abyss drawing ever closer. “I love you too,” she said into Katie’s hair. “Now, on you go and get a bit of sleep.”

“Okay,” said Katie. She kissed Nicola’s cheek and went upstairs.

Nicola exhaled slowly. She didn’t know what to say to her eldest child these days; she was too old to be oblivious to the tensions between her parents, and she had access to enough news sources to know just what the public opinion of her mother was. She was just young enough to still want to believe the best of Nicola. How long would it be before the girl saw everything as it was?

Upstairs in her own bedroom, Nicola quietly started to undress, checking every few moments that James was still sleeping; it was difficult to see his face properly without any lights burning. But as she tried to take off her tights, she stumbled and was forced to steady herself on the bedpost. “The fuck you doing?” her husband’s groggy voice broke through the silence.

“Going for a shower before work,” Nicola said. “Go back to sleep.”

“Work? When did you get home?”

“Just now. Shit has hit the fan.”

“You throwing the shit or spinning the fan?”

“Thanks for that, James. Supportive husband, as ever,” she sighed.

“Not my fault you keep fucking up.”

Nicola closed her eyes and tried not to speak. She only made it worse when she spoke, and she didn’t want to wake any of the children. “Get the kids up for school at seven, will you? Ella’s going through one of her godforsaken hair phases.”

“School’s been off since last week, Nic,” James grumbled. “You really don’t give a shit about what goes on around here, do you? You couldn’t care less about us.”

She wanted to ask him if that was why he was shagging his secretary, but decided against it. “I do care, James. I do. It’s just this new job. The department I’ve landed in charge of is a fucking mess.”

“Maybe if you’d stop making the mess bigger, you’d have more time for your family.”

Tempting as it was to let him have the fight he was so clearly picking for, Nicola picked up a bath towel from the radiator and went to the bathroom. It was so typical of him to goad her when she was at her least able to take it.

The water, after Nicola being so cold, felt like it was poured straight from the kettle onto her back. She would have preferred to get into bed and sleep forever, if not for the prodding she was sure to get from her husband and the distinct lack of peace her children would eventually allow her. It was a certainty that she would crack in the end; either she would do or say something awful, or else tell James all about last night just to see his reaction.

It was difficult to think of any time she had felt worse than she did right now, standing alone in a house full of the people she loved. She didn’t think there _was_ a time she had felt worse. Even on Westminster Bridge, perfectly ready to jump to her death, she had not known she could possibly feel this level of agony and numbness simultaneously.

Out of the shower, it was a stony silence in which she blow dried her hair, did her make up and got dressed. As she stepped towards the door, James said, “Not even a kiss goodbye?” Nicola had thought he’d fallen asleep; he had been as quiet as she had as she got herself ready to leave. With an inward groan, she turned on her heel and leaned down over James to press a kiss onto his lips. “See you tonight,” he said.

To only herself, Nicola remarked that after last night, that was a bold assumption for her husband to make.

Another car journey later, DoSAC was still largely unoccupied and dimly lit. It was, after all, only quarter to seven in the morning. Nicola decided that she could quite easily get away with a nap in her office before the civil servants and junior ministers invaded her brief tranquillity.

Sleep did not come willingly. Not when she could feel Malcolm’s arms around her, or smell the grass on Parliament Hill. The hole in her chest only widened at the thought of those bizarre moments of joy, for they were always replaced with the normality she could never escape.

Hadn’t he told her to go back to the bridge? And hadn’t he said she was defective? That she had lost the place? Even the person who had saved her life had his reservations about whether or not it was worth the effort at all.

When sleep finally came to claim her, it was restless. Her mind flickered between images of DoSAC. Newspapers. James. Her children. Malcolm. Westminster Bridge. Parliament Hill. Malcolm’s bedroom. That eerily dark taxi she had watched herself ride home in. Her own bedroom. It was like watching quick film cuts of her memories.

“Oi, you sleepy-headed bastard!” a voice bellowed. Nicola startled awake and straightened her posture to find Malcolm Tucker standing in front of her. “Where are the regional social statistics? They’re meant to be released today and I need to see them so I can soften the fucking knock-out punch when the press sees the fucking state of it.”

“They’re in my briefcase,” she told him, standing up before he could work himself into a rage. Nicola froze. “My briefcase.”

“Yes, Nicola, your fucking briefcase.”

“I think I left it in the taxi.”

It was the same sensation as when she had got into the taxi in the first place – this was her watching herself through a soundproof window, unable to do anything to put the situation right.

“What fucking taxi?!” snarled Malcolm.

“The taxi I took home this morning.”

“No, Einstein, I’m asking which fucking taxi?! They’ve got fucking registration codes!”

“How the fuck am I meant to know?!” snapped Nicola. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in London. Every second fucking moving vehicle is a fucking taxi!”

“Which company, then?!”

“I don’t know!” she said frantically. “The same one I always use. I can’t remember the name.”

“Number.”

“What?”

Malcolm’s stare would have been enough to kill a ghost twice. “Fucking phone number, you fucking retarded old fruit bat!”

Nicola, her hands trembling for the second time in one morning, picked up her mobile phone and found the number she had used to call a taxi. “Zero-two-”

“Fucking hell, write the fucking thing down! Have you got runny shite for brains?!” She scribbled the number onto a sticky note and handed it to him. “You’d better hope we get it back, or you won’t need to commit fucking suicide,” he spat at her, “‘cause I’ll hang you by the fucking intestines from the gates of Downing Street as a warning to your successor.”

Malcolm strode out of the room, barking abuse at anyone who blocked his path between her office and the lift. Nicola fell back into her chair and put her hands over her face. How could she have been so utterly careless? Of all the things that should not have happened, this was near the top of the list. She knew the reports were in that case, so why had she neglected to keep an eye on them? Malcolm was right. She really was fucking defective.

And Malcolm. Rather than a new understanding between them, the time they had spent together seemed to provide him with an even more violent hatred for her. Nicola knew she would be lucky to have all her limbs intact if it wasn’t sorted soon, never mind her job.

Not only was her marriage a joke and her relationship with her children a mess, but she somehow managed to fuck up at work twice in less than twenty-four hours.

This morning was reminding her of all the reasons she should have died last night.


	8. Chapter 8

They retrieved the briefcase – luckily, it had been taken back to the taxi office and held as lost property – but not before Malcolm completely lost it with Nicola. She drove him half-mad; how difficult could it possibly be to keep track of her belongings? Of the Government’s belongings?

He tried to remind himself that she had been unwell last night. She had been mentally and emotionally compromised. Essentially, her head had been all over the fucking place. However, it did very little to help. It was easier to remember that she had walked away from him in the dead of the night. She had made that choice to refuse his help. Why, then, should he take her mental state into consideration? Hadn’t she made a clear decision to stand still, even when she could no longer bear to do that?

As ashamed as he was to admit it to himself, the fact that they had slept together last night only drove Malcolm’s anger with Nicola to further extremes. He didn’t know why. It made no reasonable sense, which made him hate her from taking all the logic and simplicity out of their relationship.

So when he stood in her office, shouting about how she was so fucking retarded that he wouldn’t trust her to wipe her own fucking arse, it frustrated him even more that she gave no reaction.

Nicola Murray always reacted. She always tried to defend herself, tried to avoid taking the blame. It was one of the most irritating things about her. But now she sat in her chair and stared a hole through her desk as she point blank refused to look at him. Why wouldn’t she look at him when he fucking spoke?

“You aren’t even fucking listening, are you?!” he eventually bellowed at her, infuriated by her ten solid minutes of fucking silence. “You’re actually so fucking stupid, you don’t want to get any better at your fucking job!”

“I listened,” she said tonelessly. “I heard you. Are you finished yet?”

That shocked him; he would never dream of telling her so, but it really did fucking hurt to see her care so little. She was supposed to fight him. She was meant to at least care enough not to let him hurtle abuse at her with impunity. He guessed she had nothing to say, but that could never be a good thing, no matter how many times he’d prayed for this moment to come.

“Fine,” he snapped, holding up his hands. “Fine. You sit there and fucking drown yourself in self-pity. See if I give a single flying fuck!”

Malcolm walked away, unable to do anything else about Nicola that didn’t involve shaking her back to life. He strode back to his own office for refuge from the emptiness of Nicola’s office. That place was a vacuum of anything positive, and she seemed not to care at all. She stayed where she could not feel hope or life. Had he worsened her condition by going in there and sucking the very last of the energy out of the air?

* * *

A knock at the door shattered the first moment of peace Malcolm had found at all today. He almost shouted at whoever was on the other side of the door to fuck right off, but instead settled for aggressively roaring, “Come in!” Maybe they would get the message and fuck off anyway.

He immediately wished he had been more blunt and had shouted, “Fuck off,” when in walked Nicola Murray. She looked pale and tired, but then she had given herself as shit a day as she had given him; it was to be expected that she would look rough as fuck. He was sure he didn’t look much better.

“What the fuck do you want, Nicola?” he demanded of her. After last night, he was far, far too tired and impatient for her insecurity and all its many complications – not helped, of course, by the fact she was stupid enough to leave Government documents in a fucking taxi.

He watched her freeze; it was like something turned her normally bright eyes to the dullest stone. “I came to apologise,” she told him, her tone void of any feeling at all. “For everything.”

Malcolm wasn’t quite sure what to say, but somehow knew it wasn’t just the past twelve hours for which she wanted to apologise.

“So…I’m sorry. I’m sorry for every wrong I’ve done.”

He had thought (and perhaps dared to hope) that they would never mention any part of last night again. Despite his anger and burning loathing for Nicola at the moment, he forced himself to try and sound kind. “Look, I know you’ve had a fucking horrendous couple of weeks, and I do want to help, but I can’t do your fucking job for you. You’re gonnae have to start paying more attention.”

Nicola gave a silent nod. Malcolm got up and walked around the desk to face her.

“And try not to look too retarded,” he could not help but add ruthlessly. “You’re starting to come across as the kind of person who’d fucking sit on the TV and try and watch the fucking couch.”

She flinched. It was the first reaction to his words she had given since this morning.

“I don’t mean to get confused,” she said in a mere mumble. “Sometimes I can’t help it.”

Malcolm almost took it back, but even though he tried his best to treat her with decency, he really did mean what he said. What caused her airheadedness was irrelevant if it was going to bring down the Government he was struggling to keep afloat. He fixed her with a glower. “It doesn’t matter whether you mean it or not, Nic’la. Catastrophes like the last two weeks don’t help me keep you in a fucking job, do they?!”

Nicola stared into the floor between them. Reading her face was an impossible task – there was no discernible emotion to be found. That in itself was rather fucking frightening when half the reason she was so fucking amazingly shit at her job was that she wore both her heart and her anxiety on her sleeve.

He sighed heavily. “Go home. Hug your kids. Tomorrow’s a new fucking day, alright?”

She looked up, her face flickering between emptiness and sadness. He wanted to do something, to make sure she would be okay, but there was nothing that would do any good whatsoever. After all, she had run away from him while he had slept in the early hours of this morning.

“We can figure everything out in the morning, when we’ve both had a decent night’s sleep. Things always seem less shit when you’ve had a sleep,” he explained to her.

Nicola stepped forwards. For a moment, Malcolm thought she might smack him for calling her retarded. But she did nothing of the sort. No, she put her arms around him and held him close. Her grip was tight, and he returned it; even he knew a human being did not hold another like this unless they were in a great deal of pain.

A small voice in his head told him to ask her if she was okay, but after last night, he was scared of the answer. He had convinced himself that her place tonight was at home with her family; if today had proven anything to Malcolm, it was that he was very bad for her state of mind.

He chose not to speak. It was better to hug her tight, hold her head to his chest, and run his fingers through her hair. It was the only way he knew how to do this. He was useless when it came to kind words and reassurances. He knew there was too much fury and cruelty in him for that.

It could have been an hour or it could have been ten seconds. Malcolm was unsure, distracted as he was by such a strange embrace. What the fuck was going on in her head?

His anger slowly seeped away. The way she leaned into him was terrifying; it was like she was trying to tell him something, but he could not for the life of him hear her. She did not let go. If anything, she held on even tighter.

And yet, he still couldn’t ask. He still could not bear to hear what the answer might be. Perhaps that made him selfish, but it was all he could do to hold her without words. What else could he do for her? Even if he had it in him to check if she would be alright, he didn’t want to open any of her raw wounds or bring her to any harm. Besides, who was to say she would even tell him the truth?

When Nicola eventually pulled away from his body, her face was once more empty and passive. She reached up and pressed her lips to his cheek. “Goodnight, Malcolm.” There was an unexpected firmness in her words.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he replied. “Go home, chill out, and try to fucking relax, okay?”

She looked up at him. Malcolm did not like that smile at all. He did not like it one bit. Something lurked there, but he could not know how malign it was.

Nicola turned and left him alone in his office to wonder what the fuck had just happened between them. How could she ignore the past twenty-four hours? Though he had hoped the subject would not be raised, he had been resigned all day to the idea that Nicola had to talk about it all. Not only about the fact they’d had sex but about her near miss on Westminster Bridge, and about how she wanted to proceed from this point onwards.

She had said nothing, apart from her apology.

Did he really trust her to go home to her family? Surely she would have said something if she felt even nearly as bad as she had done the previous night. She had the sense to heed him when he had told her she could speak up about it in front of him…didn’t she? There was no way she was stupid enough to ignore that.

But this was Nicola Murray and, even after only knowing her a couple of weeks, Malcolm could see that a sizable number of her disasters could have been avoided if she had simply asked for help. She so rarely did until it was already too late.

Malcolm tried to go back to his work and put Nicola out of his mind. There was nothing to worry about. She was probably over the worst of it, and in any case, she would not leave her children for a second night in a row.

As always, there was a gargantuan mess still to be cleaned up, so Malcolm set about writing the necessary emails of varying levels of profane and insulting. It was almost a pleasant distraction from it all, to channel his negative energy into bollocking government offices back into their appropriate corners.

After he sent a particularly openly aggressive email to the Home Office, he found that the Department for Social Affairs and Citizenship was next on the list to hear all about his wrath. He typed in Nicola’s email address but soon discovered he could not find the words to explain just how excruciatingly difficult it was to deal with her. She was a fucking baby bunny caught in the headlights of her own self-built lorryload of fuck ups. What made her impossible to comprehend was that he had never seen her do anything out of any notion more sinister than dopey incompetence. He knew she genuinely did her best, but if this was her best, well, they were all royally fucked.

He looked up at the clock. It was nearly eleven at night. A full twenty-four hours since he had walked her from Westminster Bridge. Since he had caught her before she could jump. That look in her eyes, like she had already lost her fight, would not leave him. How could she seem so empty after being fit to burst for so long? So hollow when she had been so solid in his arms?

There was nothing else for it. He had to pick up the phone and check she was safe, for there was a nagging suspicion in his mind that something – and he didn’t know what – was not at all as it should have been. With every passing ring tone, he became more worried, so much that he let out a deep breath when she finally answered, “Hello?”

“I just wanted to check you’re okay,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” Nicola said. “Yeah, I’m almost home. Had a couple of things to do in the office before I left.” There was no inflection to her voice, and it left her sounding bleak; the problem was that he dared not call her on it.

“Good,” he sighed. “See you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Malcolm,” she answered him. Nicola hung up before he could say anything in reply.

Malcolm set his phone down on his desk and deleted the email he was about to compose. Of all the Ministers, Nicola was the most aware of her own faults. She didn’t need to be reminded. He moved on to the Health Secretary, who was long overdue a good talking to, and had managed to get the figures for the pay bands of nurses wrong in a live interview.

It was midnight before Malcolm headed home. So exhausted was he that he fell into bed fully clothed. As he dropped away into sleep, he realised his sheets still smelled of Nicola Murray.


	9. Chapter 9

Nicola Murray wandered away from DoSAC at about ten o’clock that evening. Any thought of going home was shot down by the knowledge that the kids would be in bed and she would be left alone with her husband. His company was not better than none; the fact Malcolm kept telling her to go home only proved how little he had listened to what she said to him.

She took the same path as last night. It was good to be anonymous in this darkness, left to her own devices. Even the tourists had begun to retreat to their hotels; the streets were fairly empty by London’s standards. There were still people, of course, but not nearly as many as there would have been even a few hours ago, and they all went about their business without eye contact, let alone conversation.

How did Malcolm Tucker have the nerve to berate her like that after she had seen for himself the very best of him? She knew what was underneath that anger and bravado: an essentially good but imperfect person, who would rather the world only knew his imperfections. He had been good to her. That was what she couldn’t understand. Why let her see that, offer that hand, and then take it away? Nothing about it made any sense.

She had almost wanted him to question her when she gave him her embrace. It would have meant that he did care after all. But he had not. He had simply held her as she held him. That was all. He didn’t really know her. He didn’t understand, no matter what she had told herself in his bed last night.

But he understood his sister well enough to look out for her. He had the capacity to learn how to understand – something James had always conspicuously lacked. She supposed Malcolm must have grown up having to see the why as well as the what and the how, if his sister had been as ill as he had said. That just meant that when it came to Nicola, he just didn’t want to understand. He was able to if he tried, certainly, but he didn’t want to put that much effort into someone of such little worth. Why would he bother? She wouldn’t even try if she were him, so how could she possibly expect him to put the work in?

Nicola started when her mobile phone started to ring. Malcolm Tucker’s name came up on the screen; she stopped walking, realising that she was probably about to have her head torn off – again. There was nothing attractive at all about answering a call from that demon. However, she was well aware that he would not leave her alone if she ignored him and sent him to voicemail. He would deliver whatever abuse he felt she had earned by any means he could find.

“Hello?” she most unwillingly said.

She heard him exhale, like he had been holding his breath. “I just wanted to make sure you got home okay.” His voice was low; perhaps he didn’t want anybody else to hear him give a fuck about her.

Nicola hesitated for a fraction of a moment, and then elected to lie. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m nearly home. Had a couple of things to do in the office before I left.”

“Good.” There was a relief in his sigh that made her guilt prod uncomfortably at her insides. “See you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Malcolm,” she said curtly.

She ended the call without another word; she could not bear another conversation with him.

Did he intervene because he cared about her or because he cared about the party? Did he want her alive or did he just want to avoid the consequences of her death? She knew that the death of a Cabinet minister within her first month in office was not a flattering story for any of them at DoSAC or Downing Street. Or Nicola herself, for that matter, but she wouldn’t be here to endure it so that was insignificant.

Nicola put her phone back into her pocket and continued on her walk. She had hoped walking alone might have cleared her mind a little, but it had the opposite effect. All she could think of was last night. Everything had shattered around her when she had stood on the edge of that bridge. Or rather, it had already been shattered, but all the shards of her life had collapsed around her feet. And now that there was nothing left, she lurched between the pain of those shards slicing into her and the shocked numbness that always followed.

As the sky glowed purple and the Thames flowed downstream, Nicola stood on Westminster Bridge yet again. This time, she was more careful. She stood on the pavement, leaning over the bridge’s walls; she could pass for a tourist or a late-night commuter. Thousands of people must have stopped on this bridge to take in the view of London today.

She should have jumped before Malcolm could catch her. Today never would have happened if she hadn’t been around to fuck it all up as usual. And she could not have slept with Malcolm Tucker if she had been dead and gone.

What she wouldn’t give to have the wonderful life they all seemed to think she had. The loving husband, the perfect children, the position in the Cabinet, the good friends, the self-assurance she could never hope to have. All she really had was a dysfunctional life in every area, whether it be her work, her family, her marriage or her friendships.

It was too much. There was nothing left. Everything about her was too broken and wrong and fucking idiotic. Malcolm was right. She always did more damage than good, no matter where she went or what she tried to do. Not that she didn’t know love – she loved her children, her parents, her friends, even that useless twat of a husband – but she didn’t have it in her to feel loved, if anybody could love her. There wasn’t much point in being on this planet at all. It wasn’t a happy life she had, but she had always tried to work with the lot she was given. Now she knew better.

“Excuse me?” a voice asked politely behind her. Nicola turned to find a young Asian woman standing there. “Can you please take a photo of us?” she requested, gesturing to another young woman and a man a little bit down the street.

“Of course,” Nicola said; she was sure to force a smile as she took a camera from the tourist and waited for the three of them to pose in front of the Houses of Parliament.

To Nicola, the excitement these three people displayed over something as simple as a photograph was completely disproportionate. They thanked her and walked away, chatting in their native tongue. It left Nicola with the realisation she could not remember feeling so happy or excited about anything. The last even remotely positive rush of emotion she’d known had hit her as she had danced with Malcolm on Parliament Hill, and that had vanished to leave an even greater gaping hole than the one it had so briefly filled.

Anyone normal would have found a true smile for such happy, polite young people as they explored the wider world, but their sweet smiles could not even begin to touch the emptiness that dwelled in Nicola Murray.

It was never going to leave her, was it? There was no avoiding what plagued her every single day, and Nicola quite honestly did not have the energy to keep trying to dodge the worst of herself. But a person could never outrun their own broken nature, could they? It never worked. That was something she ought to have learnt long before now. Hell had a way of ensnaring her, though, and it stripped her of her ability to understand that there really was no way out. Up until now, she had been scrambling for an exit to something – anything – better than this. Only now did she see that her only reliable exit was the one that ended her.

Careful not to draw attention to herself, Nicola leaned forwards and peered down. Below her, the bottomless Thames rushed and swirled in currents so strong she knew she would never survive them. It was sheer destruction. Its perfection was her way out of Hell.

She had given Malcolm the opportunity to question her. He could have said something to her, even just asked her why, after their horrendous treatment of one another today, she had chosen to hug him. He’d said nothing. She did not quite know why she had allowed herself to believe he had ever really cared. The only reason he had talked her down and taken her in was that he didn’t want her face as headline news.

Well, fuck him. She didn’t give a damn about what trouble it might cause Malcolm fucking Tucker. Perhaps he would experience a tiny echo of the torment she knew so well, and maybe he would finally understand where it all went wrong. And if James was left to deal with Malcolm in the aftermath, and vice versa, it was no more than they deserved for the countless hours they had both spent eroding her down to the person who now stood on Westminster Bridge.

She didn’t want to leave her children. They were hers. She had wanted such brilliant things for them, only to discover she was not the mother they needed. Nicola loved the very bones of all four of them, but she was not right for them. She never did them any good. James might even be a better father without her around; she knew she infuriated him, hampered his love for those beautiful children.

She didn’t want to leave her job, either, despite knowing she was utterly useless at it. If she had been any good at it, she might have been able to do right by many people. But Nicola wasn’t any good at it; if she ever forgot it, the press, her civil servants and Malcolm Tucker were there to remind her.

Everything she did, she made a mess of it. She wanted to be better. And if she could not be better, she didn’t want to feel a life of not being enough, or else being too much.

One hop over the bridge’s edge would put a stop to all of it.


	10. Chapter 10

Malcolm woke far too soon for his liking. His mobile was ringing. His landline was ringing. Emails were pinging through on his Blackberry. “Alright!” he shouted to nobody in particular. “All-fucking-right! Let me get out my fucking bed!”

He pulled himself upright and threw off the covers. As he glanced at the clock and found it was only four in the morning, the shrill noises of every communication device in his home pierced through him. He snatched up the mobile phone and barked, “Hello?!”

“Don’t you know how to answer a phone?” the voice on the other end snapped. It took him a moment to register that it was Terri Coverley who spoke to him.

“It’s the fucking arse end of the night!”

“Yes, Malcolm, I’d noticed that. I’d rather be sleeping too,” she replied, slightly haughtily, “but I’ve had the BBC, the _Mail_ , the _Times_ and the _Telegraph_ asking for updates on Nicola Murray’s condition.”

Malcolm got up and turned on the light. “What?” he asked her; he was confused now.

“I phoned her mobile but it didn’t get anywhere,” she explained. “I phoned her husband, and she’s in hospital. He says she fell in the Thames.”

Malcolm’s blood ran cold. Fell? Or jumped?

But he could not ask that question of Terri; the last thing he needed was for that fucking moron to have information of such gravity. She was stupid enough to pass that query on to the press and the public. “Which hospital?”

“Malcolm, I don’t-”

“Which fucking hospital, Terri?!”

“St. Thomas’s.”

He could tell she didn’t want to tell him that, though she had no right to withhold information from him. “Send me James Murray’s phone number.” He hung up on her before she could protest and answered his Blackberry. “Hello,” he said tersely.

“Hello, this is Holly Callaghan from the _Times_ -”

Without thinking about it, he ended the call. Before he dealt with any of this, he had to see for himself the state Nicola was in. Had she just broken an arm or was she lying in St. Thomas’s Hospital half-dead? Or simply dead? His Blackberry rang again. He rejected the call and looked at the text message Terri had sent him before it could get buried under everything else; she had managed to follow orders and send him James Murray’s mobile number.

It rang a few times before Malcolm was greeted by a gruff, “Speaking?”

“Malcolm Tucker,” he introduced himself as he changed into a pair of trousers. “What’s happened to Nicola?”

“Is that any of your business?”

“I’m the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications so, yes, it is my business,” Malcolm said through gritted teeth. He felt he had made a substantial and valiant effort not to swear. He decided to play the part of the concerned friend and colleague. Perhaps James might be more cooperative. “Look, I work quite closely with Nicola. I spend a lot of time with her. Is she okay?”

He heard James sigh, and could picture him leaning against the wall of a hospital corridor. “They pulled her out of the Thames,” he said, his voice almost devoid of emotion. Was he in shock? Or did he just not give a flying fuck? “She’s got a bad case of hypothermia but you know what they say: they’re not dead until-”

“-they’re warm and dead,” Malcolm finished the sentence with James. He awkwardly pulled a shirt on. “What have the doctors said?”

“Wait and see. They’ve been trying to warm her up in Intensive Care for the past few hours but who knows what the damage might be?”

Very fucking helpful, that was. He almost asked James the same question that occurred to him when Terri first told him – fell or jumped? But he didn’t know if James knew his wife was very fucking unstable. Hadn’t she said her husband used the house as a place to sleep and eat rather than a marital home? Instead of asking, he simply said, “Thanks,” and hung up.

The landline wouldn’t stop ringing. He would have answered it but he dreaded to think who might want hold of him over this who would have his home phone number. The one who crossed his mind was the Prime Minister, and he wasn’t telling that fuckwit anything until he knew himself what was going to happen to Nicola.

He picked up the phone and put it back down as he put socks and shoes on. Barely ten seconds later, it rang again. “For the love of fuck!” he shouted; he strode through his home and pulled the phoneline out of the wall. The house phone fell silent. It was the only thing that fell silent, though.

On his way out the front door, Malcolm remembered the way she had hugged him earlier. It wasn’t normal. He should have known that. He should have fucking known.

Malcolm put his phone and Blackberry on silent and got into his car; the only small mercy was that there was little in the way of traffic to irritate him. That might have been the fucking last straw. “Fucking hell, Nicola,” he snarled under his breath. “Why didn’t you fucking tell me?”

But he had not asked, had he? He had urged her to go home. This was as much on him as it was her.

Nicola had never told him how much of her problem James knew about, or how big a part of the problem he was. Malcolm knew he was an inattentive husband, and quite self-centred, but there was no way to know how much Nicola had exaggerated in her emotionally impaired state. Was he really cheating on her or what that her paranoia talking? Did he know his wife was suicidal?

For the moment, he was going to have to tread very fucking carefully around the subject. It wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have with Nicola Murray’s husband. And then there was the fact that Nicola had cheated on James with him – what the fuck was Malcolm meant to do with that information? He couldn’t tell James that, not when his wife was lying in hospital. Besides, if Nicola was right about James shagging his secretary, the idiot had got exactly what had been coming to him.

He could not shake the idea that he could have stopped this from happening. If he had kept her in his office, not allowed her to leave…but he had sent her home. He had sent her home knowing that she had tried this the previous night, that she was exhausted, that she’d had a terrible day. And he had made it all worse by shouting at her and insulting her. Nobody had ever reacted to him like this. He’d never been part of the reason someone put their life in peril. To think he might have helped push Nicola to do this…

Malcolm parked his car; he picked up his phones and looked through the emails. One, the most recent, was from a journalist. Attached to the email was a video. With a sense of dread, Malcolm opened it.

Through the darkness, he could make out Nicola, sitting on the edge of Westminster Bridge, feet dangling over the Thames. His heart went into his mouth: she pushed herself forwards and disappeared. He caught the panic as whoever shot the video started to run as they had switched it off.

This was one email he did need to reply to; this video had to be contained. Luckily, the journalist who had sent it had a sense of humanity about him. Malcolm was pretty sure he wouldn’t spread around a video of an attempted suicide. But that wasn’t to say the source of the video hadn’t already shared it far and wide. It didn’t bode well.

As he walked into the hospital, Malcolm scanned through his emails for a repeat of the video, or even a mention of it, but there was nothing. Nobody else seemed to have it, or if they had it, they weren’t telling him about it. If someone did get hold of it, there wasn’t much he could do but tell them all not to act on it. But he couldn’t risk putting out feelers to see who did have a copy for fear of tipping off those that didn’t know about it that a video existed that the Director of Communications didn’t want to be made public. He might as well dangle a red rag in front of a bull.

Malcolm’s feet stepped out of the lift and onto the Intensive Care Unit much faster than he would have liked.

He could see a man who looked like he’d been dragged out of his bed in the middle of the night – he wore jeans and a sweater, but his dark hair was ungroomed and he had not shaved. Malcolm stepped towards him. “James Murray?” he asked.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Malcolm Tucker.” He reluctantly offered his hand to James. “We spoke on the phone.”

“Oh,” said James. He appeared a little dazed. “She’s…” he began to say, looking into the room through the window. In that neutral, almost colourless room, Nicola Murray lay under what seemed to be thermal blankets. She wasn’t a large woman to begin with, but he’d never imagined that someone who could cause so much havoc could seem so breakable, or so calm. He’d expected her to look like she was asleep, but she didn’t look like that at all; if he didn’t know better, he might have said she wasn’t even breathing. Was it the room that washed the colour out of her face, or was she really that pale? Nurses tended to Nicola, but she was completely still. “She’s still cold.”

“Hypothermic?”

“Yeah,” James mumbled with a nod. He looked Malcolm straight in the face. “I don’t suppose you could stay for a while, in case there’s any news? It’s just, I’ve left Katie looking after the children but she’s upset and if the other three wake up, she might panic them. I’ll call my sister over, but it was a jump out of bed and get down here ASAP kind of job, y’know?”

Malcolm swallowed his instinctive refusal. “Okay,” he agreed, against what every sensible cell in his brain wanted to say. “I’ll need to get to the office at some point, but there’s only so much I can do there until I know what’s going to happen.”

James clapped Malcolm’s shoulder. It was like an act of solidarity, like he was thanking Malcolm for doing him a favour. Little did he know his wife wouldn’t be in Intensive Care at all if he’d done what he was meant to do for her. “I’ll be back soon.” Malcolm nodded his head and moved towards the door to Nicola’s room. “Thanks,” added James. He started to walk away.

“No problem,” he responded, unsure if James had heard him.

James turned back to face Malcolm. “I suppose the police might come around. It was an accident – God knows she’s a klutz at the best of times - but they investigate until they’re sure, don’t they? Especially when there’s a cabinet minister involved.”

“I imagine so,” he replied. He didn’t add that he could categorically say this was no fucking accident.

“Right, I’d better head off,” James said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” A nurse left the room, and James stopped her by saying, “How is she?”

“She’s not out of the woods, Mr. Murray,” the nurse said. “Her body temperature is improving, but we have to be patient.”

James nodded and the nurse went to leave. “Oh, Nurse!” James called after her. She turned back. “This is Malcolm - he’s one of Nicola’s colleagues. He’s staying with her while I deal with the children – in case there’s any news.”

The nurse smiled. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

James finally left and got into the lift. Malcolm went into the room.

He sat down in the chair at Nicola’s bedside. The machines beeped consistently, reassuring Malcolm that Nicola was indeed still alive, despite her best efforts. He touched her arm. It was unnaturally cold – more like meat than human flesh. “Nicola,” he sighed. “What the fuck were you thinking? Why didn’t you say anything?” Unsurprisingly, Nicola gave no response except for the slow rise and fall of her chest. “James has gone home to check on the kids. I said I’d wait with you. Not that you’ll be waking up any time soon – what a fucking spot you’ve yourself got into!” Nicola, as usual, gave no sensible answer. “You know your husband’s making out this is an accident, don’t you?”

Powerlessness did not come easily to Malcolm. Every professional instinct he possessed told him to get to work containing this fucking landmine Nicola had stepped on. If that video had made its way to him, it would be making its way to other people too. But he couldn’t manage the story until he knew what the story was. At this moment, while Nicola lay hovering between life and death, there was no story – just a mass of half-formed possibilities. He had no option but to wait until, at the very least, he knew whether he was dealing with a live minister or a dead one. If he was completely honest with himself, for all that he would love to work out his frustrations viciously abusing journalists, colleagues and ministers, he didn’t _want_ to leave the silence of the Intensive Care Unit until he knew that much.

Malcolm placed his hand briefly over Nicola’s, squeezing the cold fingers for a moment before tucking it carefully back under the thermal blanket. “What the fuck am I gonna do, Nicola?”


End file.
